Independence Day 2014

Today 238 years ago, the United States of America declared independence from Great Britain claiming the unalienable rights with which God has endowed each person: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and assuming among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitled them.  

Since, the 4th of July has been a celebration throughout the country.  This year we joined family in Shell Rock, Iowa to watch the town's Independence Day parade.  

We arrived 20 minutes early and set up our lawn chairs; we were surprised to see that the streets of this small town of 1,300+ people were already lined everywhere with people.

Book Review: Economic Freedom and Representative Government

Economic Freedom and Representative Government is a lecture delivered by F. A. Hayek at The Royal Society of the Arts on the 31st of October, 1973, about a year before Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.  This lecture highlights the dangers of unlimited government, points out flaws which lead to unlimited government, and offers a theoretical solution.  As always, Hayek's observations are very perspicacious, and though this lecture was written primarily for a British audience (they do not have a written Constitution), we in the United States today find ourselves facing many of the problems he wrote of 40 years ago.

To begin with, Hayek assumes that the majority of the people are in favor of a free market and against government direction; however, most of the groups would like an exception to be made in their favor.

 Take, for example, an Iowa farmer.  He is in favor of the free market, and though he may dislike the idea of giving welfare to thousands of lazy people in the inner city of Chicago, he may deem farm bills and agricultural subsidies fair and right.  The auto manufacturers couldn't care less about agricultural subsidies, but they want their bailouts, the folks in government housing want their handouts, the banks want a share when they're in trouble, and on and on...

 Any political party that wants to achieve and maintain power is forced to use its powers to buy the support of particular groups "not because the majority is interventionist, but because the ruling party would not retain a majority if it did not buy the support of particular groups by the promise of special advantages."  This is the problem.

Hayek explains that the problem is there because of majority rule.  Whatever the majority decides becomes law, and since it is law, it is believed to be just.  "A legislature is now not a body that makes laws; a law is whatever is resolved by a legislature."  Hence, "law is not dependent on justice but determines what is just."  This is a perversion of "law."  The old, real sense of the word is lost.  The legislature is not bound by committing themselves to general rules, and if they want to retain a majority they must "use coercion in the discriminatory manner that is required to assure benefits to particular people or groups."  

Here in the United States, I must note, we had a law which bound the legislatures to general rules...It was called the Constitution.  Davy Crockett understood this and said, "We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money [for special interests or charity]."  The legislatures were bound to specific duties outlined in the U.S. Constitution, but now they've freed themselves from a strict interpretation of the Constitution and make laws to try to control anything and everything, binding and fettering the people instead.  But, I digress...

According to Hayek, "The main subject of this lecture is what we have to do, if we ever again get a chance to stop those tendencies [outlined above] inherent in the existing political systems which drive us toward a totalitarian order"--an unlimited government.

To preserve individual freedom, Hayek says, coercion must be confined to the general rules of just conduct.  "An individual who is bound to obey only such rules of just conduct as I have called these rules of law in this narrow sense [lawyer's law--relating to the laws which apply equally to all and define the protected sphere of each person with which others are prohibited from interfering, made to "prevent conflicts between people who do not act under central direction but on their own initiative, pursuing their own ends..."] is free in the sense that he is not legally subject to anybody's commands, that within known limits he can choose the means and ends of his activities."  

But how?  How can legislatures, especially divided into political parties that only gain a majority by promising special benefits to some groups, resist these pervasive tendencies?  Hayek admits that there never has been a legislature limited to making laws in the narrow sense described in the last paragraph.  

Hayek proposed having two representative assemblies.  One would make laws in the narrow sense and its members, disinterested citizens, would be elected for very long terms and would not be eligible for re-election.  The other would be governed by the laws of the first assembly in directing government proper.

F.A. Hayek admitted that he did not believe his "utopian construction" of an idea for a government would not be realised in the foreseeable future.  However, he decided to promulgate the idea because as David Hume said, "In all cases, it must be advantageous to know what is the most perfect in the kind, that we may be able to bring any real constitution or form of government as near it as possible, by such gentle alterations and innovations as may not give too great a disturbance to society."

I enjoyed reading this lecture.  The problems presented by Hayek are pertinent today.  I think many of these problems would have been prevented in the United States if we had insisted on keeping Congress and the President bound by a strict interpretation of the Constitution.  

And now, my dear reader, I pose the question to you: what do you believe is the best way to face this problem caused by special interests?  What do you think is the most efficient way to preserve the classical meanings of law and justice?  Is a law whatever the legislature decides, and because a majority decides something should be a "law," is it necessarily just?  Think about it.

In God We Trust

In Memoirs of the Second World War, by Winston Churchill, I recently read about how Adolf Hitler took control of Germany.  Hitler came to power completely legally.  The citizens, suffering from unemployment and trying to recover from hyperinflation, voted for the Nazis.  A few months later, the Reichstag majority voted 441 to 94 to give Hitler complete “emergency” powers for the next 4 years. 

It seems that since the famine in Joseph’s days, whenever there is an “emergency,” people sell themselves and their inherent, God-given rights to Pharaoh (Genesis 47:18-19).  The same scenario is repeated in the first book of Samuel.  God had delivered the Israelites from all their enemies, but when there was an “emergency”—when Nahash the king of the Ammonites came—the Israelites cried, “Give us a King!”  They did not realize that God was their King.  He was their banner, Jehovah-Nissi (Exodus 17:5) who fought their battles.  He is Jehovah-Jireh, the God who provides.  He was the Lord their Healer, the Lord their peace, God Almighty.  But no, they wanted a Pharaoh of their own, an earthly, tangible, fallible king.  Samuel warned the people that they would lose their freedoms and become servants, slaves to their king.  The Israelites got what they asked for—King Saul.

History often repeats itself.  In 1932, the people of Germany were in trouble.  Who did they turn to?  God, their Father?  No!  They turned to their Pharaoh—their government.  Portraits of the Fuehrer (Father) were posted in churches, and preachers were ordered to praise the Fuehrer Hitler in their churches.  Most obeyed and became unwitting adherents to the reprehensible doctrine—unspoken but de facto—that “The state is God.”  They lost their liberties and got the “Fuehrer” Adolf Hitler, a tyrant.  

And yet even today so many people in these United States are completely blinded.  After every disaster or emergency, the government takes more power under the pretense of keeping us safe.  They forget the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  

During the Great Depression, many were unemployed, and some were going hungry.  Who did the people turn to?  The government, of course.  And in the 80 or so years since then, every time there is a little “Emergency” anywhere, they always do the same thing.  The nature of the people is predictable.  They forget “The Lord will provide” and demand that the government provide.  They have lost their strong, resilient, and independent spirit in a large part.  Like Esau, selling his birthright for a bowl of pottage, like the Israelites desiring a king, and like the Egyptians selling themselves to Pharaoh for food, many of the people are willing to sell their birthright of liberty for bowls of entitlements.  

On all of our coins, our motto is written, "In God we trust."  Do the people of these United States really trust in God?

Freedom of Religion and Equality in Educational Choices

A young girl walks to school every day--5 steps to her desk--where she is soon absorbed in her studies. She is an evangelical Christian homeschooler. School is out when she finally dozes off with a classic by her side and pen and notepad slipping from her grasp. She never misses a day of school for snow, sleet, wind, or rain. Though her rights to free exercise of religion are challenged by the public schools, her entrance into the portals of knowledge has been expedited by her alternative. It is impossible for public schools to provide satisfactory religious consideration for a very diverse populace, as “a general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another” (Hayek, 376). Equal consideration of all views can be achieved fairly only through eliminating public funding, localizing education and reducing public schools to equal footing with parochial and home schools.

The first amendment reads in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This was, at first, solely a restriction on the federal government (Permoli v. First Municipality 1845), and therefore the restriction had no influence on the schools because the federal government had no power over education (10th amendment) (Federalist No. 84). In his 6th annual address, Jefferson addressed the problem of a debt-free nation that was accumulating a surplus with the proposal that federal funding be extended to education. Education would not be taken out of the “hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal,” but an amendment to the Constitution was deemed necessary “because the objects now recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and to which it permits the public moneys to be applied.” (Richardson, Vol. I, 409-410). The suggested amendment was never passed.

But while courts have overlooked Jefferson’s official remarks about the constitutionality of federal funding of education, they have placed much stock in Jefferson’s interpretation of the First Amendment as a wall of separation between church and State, found in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (Jefferson, 332). Up to nearly fifty years after the first amendment, there is little evidence of a wall of separation in the public schools. State schools were non-sectarian, but ultimately Protestant (Parsons, 60). Washington’s admonition was heeded: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government…Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge” (Richardson, 220). Jefferson’s slight of the Bible in suggesting that young students whose “judgments [were] not mature enough for religious inquiry” would profit more by reading Greek, Roman, European, and American history” (Lambert, 227) was temporarily forgotten. As Tocqueville observed in the early nineteenth century: “In America, it is religion which leads the way to enlightenment; it is the observance of divine laws which leads man to liberty” (Tocqueville, 30).

The 14th amendment, ratified in 1868, extended the first amendment to the states. By then, the Zeitgeist had changed. In his 7th annual message, President Grant recommended that an amendment be submitted for ratification, making it the duty of each of the States to maintain public “schools adequate to the education of all the children…forbidding the teaching in the said schools of religious, atheistic, or pagan tenets; and prohibiting the granting of any school funds or school taxes, or any part thereof, either by legislative, municipal, or other authority, for the benefit or in aid, directly or indirectly, of any religious sect or denomination” (Richardson, Vol. VII, 334).

Of course, such an amendment was never passed, but, as Tocqueville states, “The peace, prosperity, and very existence of the Union rest constantly in the hands of seven [now nine] federal judges. Without them, the Constitution would be a dead letter” (Tocqueville, 169). In Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that the establishment clause of the First Amendment forbids taxes to be raised in support of any school teaching religion. In Abington Township School District v. Schempp the Supreme Court ruled school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional. In Wallace v. Jaffree, the Supreme Court ruled that the State's endorsement of prayer activities at the beginning of each school day is not consistent with the “established principle that the government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.” In Kitzmiller v. Dover the teaching of intelligent design was banned from the classroom.

Do such rulings accommodate evangelical Christian students and teachers who are instructed to “Pray without ceasing,” (King James Version, 1 Thess. 1.17), “Go…into all the world [“all” does not exclude the classroom], and preach the gospel to every creature,” (Mk 16.15) and “Acknowledge Him in all your ways, and He shall direct your paths”(Prov. 3.6)? Do the rulings accommodate Christians who are taught that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1.7), and who are instructed to “train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it”? Not at all. Instead of Christianity, creationism, and the Bible, students are taught sociology and evolution, and are psychologically evaluated (Gross, 129-148). That is why my parents chose to home school me. I was taught to read from the King James Bible with prayer and Bible reading always an integral part of every school day.

It is just as impossible to satisfy everyone with the public schools as it is to return the schools to the teaching of piety. America is now a far more diverse nation than when the Constitution and First Amendment were written. Everyone has his or her own interpretation of how a child should be raised and what he or she should be taught. As F.A. Hayek adeptly observed: “Very few of the problems of education are scientific questions in the sense that they can be decided by any objective tests. They are mostly either outright questions of value, or at least the kind of questions concerning which the only ground for trusting the judgment of some people rather than that of others is that the former have shown more good sense in other respects” (Hayek, 380). Perhaps the greatest enormity is that parents who opt out of the public school system and home school or send their children to parochial schools are compelled to furnish tax dollars for the propagation of opinions they disbelieve (Paul, 133), a practice Jefferson termed sinful and tyrannical.

Satisfaction that my rights to the free exercise of religion will be sufficiently protected will not come the day the King James Bible is studied in the public schools. That day will never come; but if it does come, my atheist and Jewish neighbors will cry that their rights have been abused. I myself would fear that the government would corrupt the church. Satisfaction that my right to the free exercise of religion is sufficiently protected will not come when Protestant teachings are re-introduced into the public schools. Anyone who believes that day will come is dreaming; but if it does come, my Catholic neighbors will cry of tyranny. To compel any man or woman, of whatever religious persuasion he or she be, to furnish money for the propagation of opinions he or she disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical. I will honor Jesus Christ with my life: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” But to everyone else I say, “Choose you this day whom you will serve,” but do not compel me to pay tribute to your god, opinions, or godless education. I am a Christian. My family is Christian. My children will be raised as Christians, and dearest to our hearts, shining eternally and in everything we do, will be the Light of the World, Jesus Christ, and His immortal gift of Liberty: the individual liberty which my forefathers sought to protect with the Bill of Rights and the eternal liberty of a conscience at peace with God.

_______________________

Works Cited:

Gross, Martin L. The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of the American Public Schools. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Print.

Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. The Federalist. Ed. Wright, Benjamin F. New York: Barns & Nobles Books, 1996. 531-541. Print.

Hayek, Friedrich A. von. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Print.

Jefferson, Thomas. The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Ed. Koch, Adrienne, and Peden, William. New York: The Modern Library, 1944. 332-333. Print.

Lambert, Frank. The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, c2003. Print.

Parsons, Wilfrid. The First Freedom. New York: D. X. McMullen Co.,1948. Print.

Paul, Ron The Revolution: A Manifesto. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2008. Print.

Richardson, James D. United States. Cong. Joint Committee on Printing. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897. 53rd Cong., 2nd sess. Washington: GPO, 1896. Print.

The Holy Bible: Authorized King James Version. Nashville, Tennessee: Holman Bible Publishers, 1998. Print.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Trans. Stephan Grant. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Pub., c2000. Print.

Do Republicans Favor the Poor and Middle Class?

[Originally posted August 12, 2011]

As a member of the middle class, I firmly answer yes, the Republicans do. The Democrats also favor the poor and middle class, but in an entirely different way.

Instead of using the poor directly as an example, let us take a very obese child who can hardly walk. This child definitely needs help, correct? Yes, both sides agree.

Side 1 proposes to force the child to get up, leave behind the sack of potato chips, candies, and favorite goodies, and miss his favorite TV shows. The child must come pull weeds in the dreaded strawberry patch, push the lawn mower, clean the chicken coop, and participate in athletics. Instead of resting afterward, the child is engaged in academic activities until his fingers develop calluses from holding a pencil.

The leaders of Side 2 call the perpetrators of the Side 1 plan heartless, and introduce their own plan. “This poor child can hardly walk--have a little pity! We need to make life easier for him.” So Side 2 brings everything the child needs or wants to him, so he doesn’t have to get up; gives him a larger allowance, so he can buy new video games and avoid boredom; and passes the child in school just because “he tried,” not because he achieved.

Whose plan does the child prefer? Side 2’s plan, of course. What are the results? The child’s weight increases till he cannot walk, the child needs more care, his caretakers (Side 2 leaders) face financial challenges, and eventually the child dies from the problems caused by obesity.

If Side 1’s plan is followed, the child will complain; and his caretakers may have difficulty managing him as he throws tantrums and refuses to work. However, with a lot of love, persistence, and patience from the caretakers, the child will lose weight, become healthy and proud of his achievements, perhaps gain a merit scholarship, and become a success. His caretakers will also prosper with a weed-free strawberry patch and mown lawn.

To me, the difference between the two plans is basically the difference between the Democratic and Republican ways of favoring the poor. The Democrats would make it easier to be poor; the Republicans would make it easier not to be poor--to succeed. If you give a man a fish, he doesn’t have to work; he can just eat the fish and be happy. But that fish will soon be gone, and the man will die of starvation. If you give a man a fishing pole (To give him a fishing pole, create jobs by lowering taxes for the rich and corporations, so they will create jobs here, not overseas, and lower taxes so it will be easier for a man or woman to own a small business.), the man may be unhappy for the first hours as he works and works for a bite. Once the man learns how to fish, however, he will never starve. We need to end welfare. It is killing the self-respect, independence, and work ethic of many of our citizens. It is killing our country (Yes, the caretakers are in financial trouble). Our country can only be great if its people are great, and people cannot become great by living off the sweat of their neighbor’s brow.

Note: Those on Social Security are not living off the sweat of others’ brow, they paid into the Social Security system, and the government has a responsibility, a debt, to pay them back. I do not, however, believe that it is right for the government to continue to force young people to invest in a failing system. I believe we the people can provide for our retirement better than can the government; I want to be allowed to choose where to invest.